I chewed some days on that post now, but want to share my 2 cents.
It's hard to give you qualified advice without knowing your situation, but being in development for quite some time (and having taught apprentices most of that time) makes me want to share some thoughts:
First of all - what is a mistake? Most mistakes we face are due to unclear specification, unspecific vision, lack of communication. To analyze what's the cause of a mistake that happened is the most important part. And it's really, really rare that individual "misbehavior" is the root cause.
I once had an apprentice who repeatedly confused dev/prod database for updates. First I was very annoyed because that could have very serious consequences. But the problem was not that he was incapable to avoid "stupid mistakes", the problem was that I thought it would be as easy for him as for me to set up an environment where it's easy to distinct between dev and prod. So we went through his IDE/Environment and set up both a naming convention and colorization to distinct the connections. The mistake never happened again.
So, was it my apprentice's fault? No, in the end, it was my fault because I had wrong assumptions, leading to expectations which could not be fulfilled with the given circumstances (unstructured/unclear environment).
In my experience, mistakes are often caused by wrong assumptions.
One wrong assumption could be that it's easy for everyone to do the exact same steps in a defined sequence, even if there are months between. I know it's easy for some people, I know it's fucking hard for other people like me. I tend to forget things after a while.
The solution, in that case, can be automation, for example. By accepting my inability to remember strict sequences of action after some time I force myself to search for solutions - beyond changing myself (because I don't think I will be successful).
Another big problem in all quality-related terms is lack of time/amount of workload and pressure.
If you want to get quality results, you have to lower the pace. Otherwise, our brains tend to fall into panic/escape mode, means the limbic brain - responsible for emotions and instinctive behaviour - becomes more active. The problem hereby is, that the limbic brain suppresses the activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is necessary for analytic and logical thinking.
That means that high pressure anatomically leads to less analytic thinking and more instinctive behavior - something pretty suboptimal for programming tasks.
Good leaders will know about this and they will try to help you identify the root cause of your mistakes.
So - if you keep doing mistakes over mistakes, for me that sounds like a sure sign for lack of leadership/mentorship. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have bad managers. But it's something to be addressed and should be discussed.
You can, of course, try to find the root cause yourself by reflecting on all aspects of the workflow which lead to the mistake. You already started doing so, which is fantastic from my point of view.
Maybe you can also ask your manager/leader to help you with reflection - that requires a certain level of trust of course.
Or you can try to find someone outside your environment who you trust and reflect onto the specific details of your mistakes.
Whatever you do - I wish you much energy and confidence!
Such a fantastic comment. My situation definitely falls into the workload and pressure category. I can clearly recall a time where I just couldn't think straight and every "simple" task became incredibly difficult.
Glad my comment was helpful :)
You have now several options to deal with the pressure problem:
Increase your resilience toward stress. Structuring your tasks can help, as can set clear borders between work/non-work. Your company is not everything - and I say this as someone who has a burnout history, so I know it's pretty hard to really absorb that. Dev.to is a great resource for tips about mental health in dev. Having non-dev hobbies/friends/social contacts definitely helps, too. And having enough sleep (I'm guilty on this one, too, but working on it)
Decrease the amount of workload/stress you're exposed to. This can happen through speaking about your issues with your manager, but again this requires a high amount of trust and a competent leader. It can happen through requesting clear prioritization and making the actual effort needed to solve a task more transparent.
If neither helps, thinking about changing your workplace might be a good option, too. You're too valuable to get burned by careless managers/company culture. Again: I have some personal experience in that area :)
If you have thoughts like "but I'm too bad/inexperienced to ever find a job somewhere outside my company" I would highly encourage you to start searching for a job pretty soon. Chances are very high that your company actively works on such a mean and toxic culture to prevent you from leaving. Good managers/leaders will encourage you to thrive and help you in growing personally. Things will not get better, but you will continue to suffer.
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I chewed some days on that post now, but want to share my 2 cents.
It's hard to give you qualified advice without knowing your situation, but being in development for quite some time (and having taught apprentices most of that time) makes me want to share some thoughts:
First of all - what is a mistake? Most mistakes we face are due to unclear specification, unspecific vision, lack of communication. To analyze what's the cause of a mistake that happened is the most important part. And it's really, really rare that individual "misbehavior" is the root cause.
I once had an apprentice who repeatedly confused dev/prod database for updates. First I was very annoyed because that could have very serious consequences. But the problem was not that he was incapable to avoid "stupid mistakes", the problem was that I thought it would be as easy for him as for me to set up an environment where it's easy to distinct between dev and prod. So we went through his IDE/Environment and set up both a naming convention and colorization to distinct the connections. The mistake never happened again.
So, was it my apprentice's fault? No, in the end, it was my fault because I had wrong assumptions, leading to expectations which could not be fulfilled with the given circumstances (unstructured/unclear environment).
In my experience, mistakes are often caused by wrong assumptions.
One wrong assumption could be that it's easy for everyone to do the exact same steps in a defined sequence, even if there are months between. I know it's easy for some people, I know it's fucking hard for other people like me. I tend to forget things after a while.
The solution, in that case, can be automation, for example. By accepting my inability to remember strict sequences of action after some time I force myself to search for solutions - beyond changing myself (because I don't think I will be successful).
Another big problem in all quality-related terms is lack of time/amount of workload and pressure.
If you want to get quality results, you have to lower the pace. Otherwise, our brains tend to fall into panic/escape mode, means the limbic brain - responsible for emotions and instinctive behaviour - becomes more active. The problem hereby is, that the limbic brain suppresses the activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is necessary for analytic and logical thinking.
That means that high pressure anatomically leads to less analytic thinking and more instinctive behavior - something pretty suboptimal for programming tasks.
Good leaders will know about this and they will try to help you identify the root cause of your mistakes.
So - if you keep doing mistakes over mistakes, for me that sounds like a sure sign for lack of leadership/mentorship. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have bad managers. But it's something to be addressed and should be discussed.
You can, of course, try to find the root cause yourself by reflecting on all aspects of the workflow which lead to the mistake. You already started doing so, which is fantastic from my point of view.
Maybe you can also ask your manager/leader to help you with reflection - that requires a certain level of trust of course.
Or you can try to find someone outside your environment who you trust and reflect onto the specific details of your mistakes.
Whatever you do - I wish you much energy and confidence!
Cheers,
Sam
Such a fantastic comment. My situation definitely falls into the workload and pressure category. I can clearly recall a time where I just couldn't think straight and every "simple" task became incredibly difficult.
Great stuff about the brain!
Thank you so much!
Glad my comment was helpful :)
You have now several options to deal with the pressure problem: